Woman’s Death Raises N.Y. Train Shooting Toll to 6

A woman who moved to the suburbs in part because the Long Island Rail Road offered an easy commute to New York City died on Sunday, becoming the sixth fatality of a shooting rampage on the train.

Amy Federici, a 27-year-old widow, was coming home on the 5:33 p.m. train Tuesday when she was shot in the neck by a man walking up and down the aisles firing a 9-millimeter semiautomatic gun.

The bullet severed an artery to Federici’s brain and she never regained consciousness.

In all, 23 people were shot as the train pulled into Garden City, N.Y.

Police charged Colin Ferguson with the rampage. Investigators said handwritten notes were found in his pocket in which he complained of racism by a wide variety of individuals and institutions.

Earlier Sunday, the Rev. Jesse Jackson spoke about the tragedy to 700 worshipers at the Cathedral of the Incarnation, an Episcopal church in Garden City.

“This is a time for remorse and prayer, not anger and pistols,” Jackson said. “We must not recycle violence; we must incinerate it.”

Referring to a comment in which Nassau County Executive Thomas Gulotta had called Ferguson an “animal,” Jackson said: “We must not be distracted by hostility and fear rubbing a sore raw by using inflammatory rhetoric.”

Seven or eight white protesters marched across from the church, holding signs, including a sheet with the words “racist animal” on it.

Federici, an interior designer for MTV, had married last year, then became a widow three months later when her husband, Gary, died of liver and pancreatic cancer.